CHAPTER 12
Jess pushed her way through the front door of her tiny terraced house, laden with her purchases from the Outdoor Shop. A large rucksack, pop-up tent, self-inflating mattress and two carrier bags full of clothes and equipment. She locked the door behind her, took her purchases upstairs and threw them on the bed. She would sort it out later. First, she had work to do, and time was of the essence.
The cupboard under the stairs was the depository for a range of domestic items: ironing board and iron, dustpan and brush, dusters, washing basket, spare light bulbs and various cleaning materials. Right at the back, she found what she was looking for. An old single-sheet shredder Mo had bought a while back to get rid of surplus paperwork and receipts but hardly used. She managed to find it buried under some black sacks and dragged it out, took it into the living room and plugged it in.
She had a file of papers, all the correspondence relating to the mortgage, loan account statements, interest certificates, statutory notices from the Crown Court in respect of eviction proceedings, the increasingly threatening letters from the council, reminders and disconnection warnings from Northern & Midland Energy, as well as letters of appointment from her erstwhile employer, Debita Debt Management, payslips, documents from HMRC she didn’t understand, and letters from the Home Office and the Foreign Office that she did. Letters from St James about Joe’s treatment and care, funeral bills and death certificates for her mother, birth certificates for herself and Leila. It was sobering how it had mounted up so quickly, especially in just six months, before which she had hardly seen any paperwork at all. Mo had never let her open any mail and she guessed he must have shredded most of it himself while she was out at work.
She opened the file at the beginning and, cross-legged on the floor with the shredder in front of her, she put the first sheet into the slot. It burst into life with a loud whine as soon as it sensed the first page, gobbling it up in a few seconds. She tried to do multiple pages but quickly realised the cheap shredder was not capable of taking more than one at a time without jamming, so she went slowly and methodically, page by page, file by file. She had just got into a rhythm when the doorbell went.
The shredder went quiet and she looked up at the front door. It couldn’t be the men in black coats. They wouldn’t come back until Friday, she was certain, and no one else usually called; but then how would she know? She was always out at work. She got to her feet and opened the door.
Two men in uniform. Dark trousers and blue polo shirts sporting the motif “Northern & Midland Energy”, ID cards dangling from their belts: older one at the front, fifties, balding, glasses; younger one behind, small toolbox in hand. The older one had a moderately pained expression on his face.
“Mrs Khalid?” he enquired politely. She looked him straight in the eye without answering. He continued. “We’re from—”
“I know where you’re from,” she said, stopping him in his tracks, and before he could say anything else she had whirled around, leaving them at the open door, and taken up her position on the floor in front of the shredder, where she resumed her work one page at a time.
The older one looked round at his younger colleague and, giving him a nod, stepped tentatively into the hallway and open-plan sitting room, followed nervously by his assistant. Jess continued to feed pages into the shredder and was suddenly aware of the terrible noise it made, but tried to ignore their presence as they took up position on the other side of the sofa that separated them. The older one cleared his throat to indicate his presence but was drowned out by the noise of the shredder. He raised his voice a little.
“Mrs Khalid?” Again, a little louder. “Mrs Khalid?” Jess stopped what she was doing but remained on the floor, staring at the now silent machine. “Mrs Khalid,” he went on apologetically, “unless you or your husband settle your account immediately, or at least make the minimum payment, we’re authorised to turn off your supply?” The sentence ended like a question. Did she understand what he was saying? Jess understood. Without hesitation she started again, feeding a sheet of paper into the machine which roared back into life, gobbling, chomping. Destroying.
The older one gave his sidekick a look of consternation and decided it was pointless to continue negotiating. He nodded towards the kitchen and they left her alone in the sitting room on the floor, concentrating on the shredder, her expression fixed in quiet determination at the task in hand.
It only took them twenty seconds. Halfway into the jaws of death, one of the pages halted as the shredder abruptly died and simultaneously the lights went out. Jess froze for a moment and then tipped her head forward onto her chest.
The men returned to the now gloomy sitting room, the only light coming in from the open front door and through which, in the unlit room, the street sounds seemed curiously amplified. Jess sat immobile, staring at the inert machine and the piece of paper stuck halfway in, halfway out.
“Mrs Khalid?” said the older one, again a hint of apology and sympathy in his voice. “We’ve terminated your supply.” Jess could not think of a suitable response to this, there being no doubt why her home was now silent and in darkness, but he went on, fingering and waving a business card at her. “If you would like to ring this number and make the minimum payment, we can reconnect you.” They both knew it was futile, but she assumed the company had laid down procedures that he had to follow and he was just going through the motions, delivering a speech he had to make several times a day. He laid the card gently down on the back of the sofa. “We’ll see ourselves out,” he said, and she thought she could sense some sadness in his voice, but she ignored him anyway. He nodded to his companion who followed him out of the front door, closing it behind him.
Jess sat still on the floor as the sounds of the street dissolved and the gloom deepened. All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing, a heartbeat thumping deep in her chest and a distant hiss of static in her ears caused by the unholy silence that enveloped her. The machine was dead and so was her house. Deprived of the oxygen of electricity, it was nothing more than a shelter from the wind and rain, a lifeless shell that would now begin to decay and one day slowly return to earth. She had already considered how debilitating the absence of power would be. No cooker, no microwave, no fridge, no fire, no washing machine, no TV, no kettle, no hot water, no light. But now it had actually happened, it took on a whole new meaning.
She had a radio and a torch, both good until the batteries ran out, and her phone, whose battery would die in due course, never to be recharged.
She looked at the single sheet of paper, stuck in the jaws of the shredder, and sucked in a deep breath. She was suddenly calm. She didn’t know why. Was it the calm before the storm? She should be collapsed in a heap, curled up in a foetal position, rocking and moaning, wailing and crying at the succession of blows that had rained down on her in the last couple of days, taking the last traces of her existence and leaving her with nothing other than the clothes she was wearing.
From a happy and conventional family life eight years ago to this precise moment where she sat cross-legged in the gloomy silence; she wondered how she had got here. What sequence of steps had brought her to this moment in time? She knew, of course, but never imagined it would come to this. Jessica Anne Khalid had finally been vanquished, destroyed, wiped out by the actions and, often, the inactions of others, and she had borne it all, spiralling downwards, little by little, without realising what was happening.
But the adrenalin kicked in again and she reminded herself who she was. She was someone else now, and that someone else lifted her head up in defiance, fuelled by a strength and determination she didn’t know she had. She was finally free. Free from the abuse of her father, free from her ignoble, cold-hearted bastard of a husband, free from the worthless, futile jobs she did simply to fulfil obligations that were not hers to fulfil, and free from the insensitive men who called themselves her employers. Free from the men in black coats and free from the threatening letters demanding another piece of her. Free from her cold, miserable, pointless existence. Free from everything.
Not quite. She looked again at the sheet of paper forlorn in the shredder and, with a flourish, tore it off, slapped it into the file sitting on the floor and jumped to her feet.
She found matches in one of the kitchen drawers and then hurled open the door to the tiny, paved area at the back of her house, retrieving a metal bucket that sat next to the bins. She set it down with a clatter, scrunched up the torn paper and threw it inside. She fumbled for a match and when it caught, applied the flame to the corner. It was reluctant to start, but start it did, igniting with a puff of white smoke as she reached into the file for the remaining documents.
One by one, she dropped them into the bucket, and as each one caught, the smoke cloud grew and billowed out across the backyard. The letter of dismissal from Debita, the council tax demand, the electricity bills, the letters from the County Court, the letters from the Home Office, the bills from the nursing home, the letters from the bank, the eviction notice – all went up in flames, leaving an ever-growing pile of grey ash in the bottom of the bucket.
And finally, the last document. She stopped to read it. A birth certificate. Hers. Jessica Anne Butler, girl, born 1 October 1995 at Lewisham General Hospital, father Joseph Albert Butler, bus driver, mother Margaret Doreen Butler, shop assistant. The last record of her entry into this world and her existence in this place. She looked at it again, hesitant, and then slowly fed it into the dying embers of the tin bucket where it caught immediately and was quickly consumed. Jessica Anne Khalid, née Butler, no longer existed. She was free. And tomorrow, she would start all over again.
She sat on the floor in the sitting room, in front of the coffee table, scissors in hand. A candle flickered in its holder, projecting dancing shadows on the wall, the only light in the house apart from the sporadic sweep of headlights as a car passed by in the street outside.
The radio was on, playing something soothing, but the batteries were old so the volume undulated as reception became increasingly crackly and erratic. An empty takeaway pizza box lay open on the table next to the remains of a bottle of cheap sparkling wine. The last supper. She snipped through the last of the credit cards with the scissors, although almost all were useless and had been stopped, and reached for the bottle, tipping the last inch or so into a tumbler, glugging it back messily and swallowing deeply.
She had remembered the bottle and retrieved it from the back of a kitchen cupboard where it had lain unopened for the last four years. The handwritten label was still tied round the neck: “Something to wet the baby’s head! Love, Mum and Dad xx” it said in her mother’s block capitals. Cause for celebration, she had thought, and had then phoned Papa John’s to order in a pizza, something she had never done before even though she had passed the shop hundreds of times, wondering what it was like to enjoy a luxury like that.
She had used the last of her cash to do it, but she felt like celebrating her new status. She still had Joe’s debit card which she had used earlier that day in the Outdoor Shop, and she would go to the cashpoint tomorrow to withdraw what was left, if anything.
She knew his pension payment would be credited in a few days and had considered waiting until then, but Joe was dead and she knew his pension would stop on the day he died. Even though the pension company would not be aware of it and the payment would most likely go through as normal, the money didn’t belong to her; and no matter how much she needed it, she wouldn’t take it. She would not start her new life owing money to anyone.
She drained the tumbler and leant over to switch off the radio. She hadn’t drunk anything for years so the alcohol made her feel especially woozy and lightheaded. She blew out the candle, and the darkness and silence enveloped her. Time for bed.
But she wasn’t tired. Her mind was buzzing. She lay awake in bed in the dark contemplating, planning, anticipating. She wanted the morning to come. Now.
***
A misty rain drizzled down on the back streets of Wellingford, the puddles forming on the roads and pavements reflecting the sparkle of streetlamps. Sixteen-year-old Jess could sense the patter of raindrops on the hood of her anorak, and feeling the odd one splash on her cheek when she lifted her head, pulled it forward to keep dry.
It was 1 a.m. and she felt it was time to go home. It would be safe by now. There was always the possibility that Joe would wait up for her, but more often than not, his drunken, weary body would succumb to the need for rest and would soon overcome both his yearnings and any frustration he felt at finding his daughter absent from her bed. Again.
She had once got back at 12.30. Too early. From the top of the stairs, she had heard him in in her room, moaning to himself, bedsprings squeaking, breath heaving as if running an indoor marathon, reaching a crescendo before blurting out her name in a gasp and sigh of relief. She had quickly retreated down the stairs and, huddled in the stairwell, watched his shuffled return to his room, head bowed. Only after another twenty minutes did she carefully and silently enter her room, do her best to clear up the mess and get to bed.
Her new regime had evolved over time. His visits were irregular but almost always followed a drinking session and had become more frequent. He had also become more demanding, as if it were not already distressing and repulsive enough, and while she developed an ability to shut each experience out of her mind, she could see where it was going and it frightened her. She knew that there would come a point where she had to resist; and if he was drunk, he would react badly.
So her normal routine on a Saturday night, as well as any other night she knew her father would be in the pub, was to slip out at 11 and not get back till after 1 a.m., just to be on the safe side. Her mother knew what she did and pretended not to notice. Madge judged it the lesser of two evils and a cruel irony that her daughter’s safety was probably better preserved at midnight out alone on the streets of Wellingford than in the sanctuary of her own home.
The morning after, she would have breakfast quickly and quietly, not a word exchanged with her mother, her father still languishing in bed sleeping off his hangover, before grabbing her bag and setting off for school. Madge would kiss Jess goodbye and wish her well for the day. Their eyes rarely met, but when they did, Jess could see the darkness that lay within, the utter sadness and despair, a reflection of the desolation she felt herself. And when she got home and her father was in the chair watching afternoon TV, he would greet her fondly, ask about her day, what she had been up to, and invariably told her that they would all go out for a picnic at the weekend. Nice as pie. Normal, loving, concerned and considerate. Sober. Her dad. Then she would go to her room and stay there till morning; or 11 p.m., if he went out.
At sixteen, Jess was already a woman – her father had seen to that – but she remained naïve in many ways. She didn’t mix easily with people, didn’t engage with strangers, however benign they might appear, and felt safer in her own company. She became increasingly insular, observed the world through hooded eyes and looked over her shoulder at every turn. The people she used to call friends had turned against her. Girls her own age at school, primed with gossip from their parents, neighbours with whom she once exchanged day-to-day pleasantries, all now regarded her with contempt and suspicion, as they did the whole Butler family, all three of them.
There was little in long rows of terraced houses that folks didn’t know about other folks. They knew what went on behind closed doors in the Butler household, knew there was no smoke without fire, knew that acquiescence in domestic violence was every bit a crime as violence itself. She heard them talking in the street to her back as she walked past on her way to school, loud enough for her to hear, knowing she wouldn’t challenge them.
“It’s disgusting, what they do, them Butlers. I bet she enjoys it, the little tart. She’ll be on the streets in no time, mark my words. At least that way they’ll be earning and not sponging off the government. And if ‘er indoors had any bottle, she’d clout him back. If my Brian ever tried that, God help him, he’d get a blunt knife to his balls and the fat end of a frying pan, he would.”
Jess never regarded herself or her mother as victims, but by no stretch of the imagination could they be regarded as willing participants. So she found it extremely difficult to rationalise the attitude of those people who criticised her, despised them both for allowing it to happen. She formed the view that perhaps the cruelty inflicted by others was as much to do with concealing the inadequacies in their own lives, deflecting attention from themselves, a moral deficiency laced with a large dose of good old-fashioned gossip.
It seemed to her that in the absence of an escape route, the only way she and her mother could tolerate her father’s behaviour was to manage the situation as best they could, and maybe, just maybe, he might get a job and their lives might then take on some semblance of normality. Jess was out tonight, managing her situation.
She decided she would get to the end of the street, turn back the way she had come and then take the shorter route home past the gasometers and the all-night petrol station. The rain was easing off now, and as she approached a crossroads, the intersection of four streets of terraced houses, she stopped to lift her hood and let the cool night air flow around her long brown hair.
She could see no one and almost all the house lights were off, but she thought she could hear people laughing and talking animatedly, voices lowered and raised, as if a party was going on somewhere nearby. But there was no one around and she was puzzled that she couldn’t determine the source of the revelry.
The street to her right was notable for a large gap in the row of terraced houses where three of them had been demolished following a fire and gas explosion two years previously. The front was still boarded up with corrugated iron sheeting which over time had begun to rust in the weather and buckle from a series of minor collisions, accidental and otherwise, and which at one side had become detached from the wall of the adjoining house. The laughing, no, giggling, was coming from behind the corrugated iron barrier.
Her immediate instinct was to walk away, mind her own business, but something compelled her to approach the gap and peer through into the darkness of the waste ground beyond. Twenty yards distant, she could see eight or nine men arranged in a semicircle, some standing around, one sitting on an upturned oil drum, one on a wooden crate, another on a white plastic patio chair, each with a bottle in hand, gesturing and provoking each other in accented English. And standing before them in a small group, three girls, twitching and squirming, giggling at the crude humour of the men until one of them would turn to her friends and let out a shriek of laughter.
One of the men passed the taller of the three girls a wine bottle which she raised swiftly to her mouth and took a long swig before falling back, spluttering and coughing, to the hilarious reactions of all those present. She then passed it to her friend who repeated the trick, and finally, the third one, who managed the task without incident, eliciting loud praise and applause from the men. A small plastic bag was being proffered by another of the men to each of the girls, sweets perhaps, which they took and giggled in delight as they put them in their mouths.
Jess thought if this was a party it was not a very good one. Many of the men were middle-aged, one or two as old as her father, while others were maybe in their twenties or even thirties; whereas the girls were no older than she was and probably even younger, maybe fourteen or so, and one of them perhaps no more than twelve.
She stood for a moment, fascinated but unnerved, so didn’t hear the two men behind her until one of them spoke and made her jump. “Good evening, miss.” She turned swiftly. Her instinct was to run, get away, but one of them was blocking the path to her right, the other the path to her left, a parked white minicab blocking the third way out into the narrow street. “Is you looking for someone?” he said with a relaxed smile.
He was Asian, Indian, Pakistani, whatever; she couldn’t tell the difference except for those guys who had brightly coloured bandages around their heads, Sikhs, and he wasn’t one of those. Middle-aged, maybe fifty-something like some of the men she had been watching, with a thick head of greying hair and a bushy moustache, white shirt, sleeves rolled up and black jeans. She glanced at the other one. Also Asian, but much younger, fresh-faced, big shiny watch on his wrist, two shirt buttons undone revealing a heavy gold necklace clearly visible against a smooth bare chest. He looked familiar. The older man spoke again.
“Is you looking for a friend?” She turned back to him. “Or maybe you want to have some fun?” he asked, hands on hips, smiling, revealing a full set of white teeth. Jess said nothing, just looked at him, fear and trepidation rising steadily. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unsure of what to do. She rarely saw anyone on the pavement during her midnight walks, and if she did, she would cross the street or hurry off in a different direction, always choosing a well-lit street over parkland or industrial estates. The guys did not look threatening, but she was still afraid.
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m just on my way home.” She attempted half a step but the men adjusted their positions to compensate and she froze. The older man went on gently. Still smiling.
“Oh, now that is big shame, cos we is just going to have birthday party at my place with lots of nice young people there, and music and lots of drink, and pakora and samosa. Do you like pakora and samosa?” he asked pleasantly. She had heard of them and thought it was food of some sort but had never tried them. Joe was not going to have any of the foreign Paki muck in his house.
“Do you want to come? I have my minibus here,” he said, pointing up the street. She turned her head to see a van with windows, sliding door open to the pavement, lights on.
“So, transport is provided and we take everyone there, and when we finish, we take everyone home.” He raised his arms in a gesture which said, how could you refuse? “Please, come to my party and have some fun, then, when you are ready, we run you back home again.”
She hesitated. They seemed nice enough, and although she just wanted to go home, something in what he said sounded strangely alluring. Or maybe it was his younger companion who intrigued her. She never went to parties because no one ever invited her, and it was ages since she had mixed with people her own age. She was two or three miles from home and didn’t know anyone in this part of town, so no one would know her and no one would be horrid to her. She thought it might be fun and it would certainly be different. And tomorrow was Sunday; she could be back before breakfast and her parents would be none the wiser.
The older man could see she was thinking it over and became slightly more serious, almost fatherly. “And if I may say so, I don’t think a young lady like you should be out alone at night by yourself. You meet lots of strange people these days, and you never know,” he said with a concerned expression and a wag of his finger. The younger man said nothing. “I think it best if we take you home in my minibus. But even better if you come to my birthday party!” He beamed again and spread his arms wide.
She smiled and looked at the younger man, who had an awkward expression. He said something in Urdu to the older man. “Mein usay jaanta hon.” I know her.
The older man responded and the conversation became animated. Rapid, argumentative, remonstrative and unintelligible, punctuated with arm movements and hand gestures. Jess’s head swung back and forth between them as they argued out whatever it was they were arguing about. She felt uneasy again. They stopped. The older one made a dismissive gesture with his hand and a hissing noise between his teeth, and without another word, strode past Jess, who turned and watched him pass through the gap in the corrugated iron barrier into the waste land beyond.
“You’re Jess, aren’t you?” said the younger one. She turned back to look at him, puzzled, wondering how he knew her name, but now he looked more familiar. “From Pickering Street?” He knew where she lived, too. He went on. “I’m Mohammed Khalid. I live across the road from you, about ten doors down” His English was perfect, virtually unaccented, as it would be for a second-generation Pakistani, born and bred in Wellingford. The penny dropped. Yes of course.
“Oh. Yes. Hello, Mohammed,” she said, not knowing what else to say but relieved that there was probably nothing to be afraid of. After all, he was a neighbour, of sorts. They had virtually grown up together and been to the same school, although he was much older than she was, perhaps even twenty-one, and she had seen him and his family many times over the years, although they had never spoken before. Her dad didn’t approve.
“They come over here with their hundreds of kids and their filthy old folk and there’s ten of ’em in that house and they stink the street out with their curries and then they’re allowed to build a bleedin’ mosque and go there shoutin’ Allah Oo Akbar or whatever and then they take all the jobs so decent people can’t get work. It’s a fuckin’ disgrace. I tell you what I’d do, I’d pack ’em all in a big ship and send ’em back, that’s what I’d do, or bloody sink it, more like. This country’s for British people, not a bunch of lazy fucking Pakis. The place is overrun with ’em and one day there’ll be no room for any of us decent folk. Don’t you go near ’em, you hear? So help me God. And when did you see a white person driving a bus – never! They got it all sown up, the bastards.”
“Mo” he said offering his hand, which she took limply. His flesh was warm and soft and he hung onto her hand for longer than necessary, but she had no desire to pull it away. It was a nice feeling. “I told my uncle that I knew you,” he explained, “and that it might be better if I took you home now as we both know your father wouldn’t approve of you going to my uncle’s birthday party. And also, they might be getting worried about you.”
He smiled, and she smiled back. She was a little disappointed but also a little relieved. He went on: “I’m not going to the party as I have to take some people to the airport early tomorrow, so I’m going home now in my cab.” He gestured at a white Passat behind her. “Can I drop you off? We live in the same street, and I’d be a bit worried about leaving you out here by yourself.”
Jess thought about this for a moment but decided she could trust him, and something inside her wanted to stay with him a while longer, party or no party.
“Okay,” she said and smiled, and he guided her past the open minibus to his car and like a gentleman let her into the passenger side, closing the door after her. She was flattered and pleased by this modest act of chivalry and watched him as he swaggered in front of the car. But her attention was drawn to the corrugated iron barrier where they had been standing a moment ago.
She could see people spilling out from the gap in the barrier. Four men with one of the girls, the older one, unsteady on her feet. The girl clambered into the minibus followed by the men, and Jess was sure one of them had helped her up by placing a hand on her bottom. A second group followed, but this time the girl had her arm around a man’s neck and he had an arm around her waist. He deposited her head first into the doorway of the minibus where outstretched hands grabbed her under the arms and she was hauled inside, followed by the other men, still swigging from beer bottles and laughing.
Finally, Mo’s uncle appeared, carrying the twelve-year-old in his arms. He handed her into the bus, slid the door closed and climbed into the driver’s seat. The minibus pulled away from the kerb, passing Mo’s Passat which Mo then guided out of its space, heading in the opposite direction.
Jess was a little confused about what she had just witnessed. The girls seemed too tired or too drunk to go to a party, and there were no Asian women or white men there either; just three youngish girls and a bunch of Asian men. And why were they out so late? Why was a birthday party starting after midnight? Maybe it was one of those all-day things and they always started at very beginning of the day. She felt she needed to say something to Mo to break the silence.
“It’s very kind of you to run me home.”
“It’s no problem.” He smiled at her. “But don’t tell your father about it. I know he’s not very keen on people like me, especially the men.” he said without rancour. How true was that? she thought. Joe would go mad if he saw her in this car with this man. “And he would be very, very unhappy if he thought you had gone to an Asian celebration,” he said, smiling again. She looked him and judged he must be at least twenty-one. An adult. His teeth were white as snow, especially set against his dark skin, and he was very handsome, very charming. She felt a stirring inside her that she had not experienced before.
“You know him, then?”
“Let’s just say, I know what he’s like. He’s not the only one. There are lots of English people round here who don’t like us, don’t like what we are or wha